The invention relates to apparatus for wet treatment of a length of textile material in hank form, the apparatus having a plurality of chambers through which the length of material passes in succession as well as transport means arranged between the individual chambers to convey the length of material.
Apparatus of the aforementioned type is used in particular for wet finishing of lengths of textile material. The treatment area, whether open or closed, can be divided into individual chambers particularly in its lower portion in such a way that the length of material passes substantially spirally through the whole treatment area or the whole apparatus. For such treatment the chambers preferably are so constructed that the length of material can rest in each chamber for a specific period of time, thereby producing particularly good results from the wet treatment.
However, difficulties occur with the known apparatus if a specific resting time for the length of material is to be set in each chamber. It may be assumed that once a particular degree of filling has been set in each chamber for a specific type of material this could always be maintained approximately uniformly if the same quantity of material is removed from each chamber as was introduced. However, this can only be achieved with lengths of material which are completely lacking in elasticity and do not change in any way under the different treatment conditions. In practice, wet treatment is used predominantly for more or less elastic lengths of material which are subject to varying stretching effects, depending upon the treatment temperature and the concentrations in the treatment fluid, so that variations in the load in the individual chambers occur in the course of a long wet treatment, resulting in undesirable fluctuations in the results of the treatment.